The weblog of Irfan Yusuf, bush lawyer, humorist and award-winning author, once a small-c conservative but now politically left right out. His often irreverent take on things appears in some newspapers in Australia and New Zealand and online. His comic memoir "Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-fascist" was published in May 2009 and won the Iremonger Award for Public Issues Writing.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

VIDEO: We've been gathering intelligence for this operation for months ...

An Israeli Defense Force operative lets slip that the IDF has been planning this Gaza operation for months. is the current bombardment of Gaza really in response to HAMAS rockets?

And an Israeli human rights group has thrown doubt on Israel's claims to be avoiding civilian casualties. The Al Jazeera video below includes an interview with the father of some boys who were loading gas cannisters onto a truck until they were blown to bits. The accompanying text to the video reads as follows:

The Israeli military says it bombed a lorry which Hamas fighters were loading with rockets on Monday.

But an Israeli human rights group says civilians were killed as they tried to protect their goods.

Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid talks to a Palestinian who says the vehicle was his and that it was being loaded with gas canisters by his family.

Of course they were planning this for months. That's why they were able to keep civilian casualties so low, rather than simply carpet bombing Gaza as nearly any other country would have given the same provocation.

However it also completely writes-off your later argument that this is all an election stunt.

The planning commenced prior to the current Government, many of whom are not standing for re-election. The theory doesn't work at all and simply demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about Israeli politics.

Not entirely your fault - you're simply repeating the endless propaganda from pro-terrorist sources, but it would be nice if you could apply a little bit of Clue(tm).

Al-Jazeera are so pro-terrorist that they have David Frost, Rageh Omaar and Riz Khan working for them.

Would you rather we watch FoxNews?

And what would you know about Israeli politics? If they were planning this for months, does this mean it didn't figure in the current government's election strategy? Don't Israeli politicians plan their campaigns?